Fwd: Termination Shock Now: Reducing air pollution is accelerating global warming
Robin Collins
From: One Percent Brighter <franci...@substack.com>
Date: Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 9:48 AM
Subject: Termination Shock Now: Reducing air pollution is accelerating global warming
To: <robi...@gmail.com>
Termination Shock Now: Reducing air pollution is accelerating global warmingGreenhouse gases are no longer the main reason the planet is warming
Two-thirds of global warming this century is the result of cleaning up air pollution. Do not adjust your sets, your screen is not malfunctioning. If Professor Peter Cox, of the University of Exeter, and his colleague Margaux Marchant are right, greenhouse gases are no longer the main driver of global warming. The mechanism is well understood. Some portion of the energy that reaches the Earth from the sun bounces back out to space, the rest is absorbed. The balance between them is not fixed. Sulfur pollution in the atmosphere tends to make clouds brighter, meaning they bounce more solar energy back out to space. The truth that dare not speak its name is that sulfur pollution counteracts global warming, so when you clean it up, the globe warms up faster. Let me be clear, SO₂ in the air sucks: it causes acid rain, it’s bad for your lungs, it messes with terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in all kinds of ways. We have very good reasons to clean it up. But when we do clean it up, we diminish albedo. Less SO₂ means duller clouds, which means less solar energy bounces back out into space, which means more energy gets trapped in the atmosphere. That this could happen isn’t at all news to climate researchers, but Cox and Marchant’s research shows this effect is possibly quite a lot bigger than we’d grasped. To be clear, this isn’t some fringe theory from some internet rando: Professor Cox is one of the most senior climate researchers in the world. He’s a lead author on the 4th, 5th and 6th Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a member of the UK Government’s Defra Scientific Advisory Council, as well as leading one of the world’s top centers for Climate Research. One Percent Brighter is SO₂-aware. Guys like Peter Cox don’t imperil reputations built painstakingly over decades on an explosive result like this unless they’re pretty darn sure. You can learn about his research in all its gory details in this podcast he did with Leon Simons. This is big news. And yet, I bet you haven’t heard about it. The mainstream media hates to cover this kind of story. There’s a strong bias towards climate stories that are morally tidy. Stories where pollution is bad and kills the earth, and stopping pollution is good and saves the earth. There’s a panicked unwillingness to acknowledge the messy reality the story of SO₂ abatement brings, where we help mother earth by cleaning up a pollutant and it thanks us by kicking us in the groin. The reality is, the atmosphere isn’t interested in your morality play. The laws of thermodynamics couldn’t care less if they line up with your NGO’s Vision statement. Sulfur dioxide in the air will keep both acidifying the rain and cooling the planet whether we like it or not. If we were generally saner about climate change, we’d recognize this story for what it is: a loud, blaring siren telling us we’ve spent decades years actually doing geoengineering, without ever quite acknowledging it to ourselves. Now we’re stopping, and the result is what we always knew it would be: Termination Shock. You’re a free subscriber to One Percent Brighter. Paid subscribers get extra karma.
© 2025 Quico Toro
|
oswald....@hispeed.ch
Robin,
the sentence
«Greenhouse Gases are no longer the main reason the planet is warming”
is wrong. GHG are in fact the main reason the planet is warming. If you read carefully, you will see that the text says “this century”. So the author of the sentence will say, ok, last century GHG were but this century they ain’t. But that’s nonsense. GHG still are the main reason the planet is warming. Maybe the author will then say, right, but the additional warming which happened since year 2000 is mainly caused by SO2 reduction. But that additional warming is some 0.3 °C, whereas the overall warming is 1.5 °C, and out of the 0.3 °C that greater part would be maybe 0.18 °C.
All in all the article is fun to read, and also points to a true fact saying that SO2 is a cooling pollutant which is being reduced massively, but still: The sentence above is wrong.
Regards
Oswald Petersen
Atmospheric Methane Removal AG
Lärchenstr. 5
CH-8280 Kreuzlingen
Tel: +41-71-6887514
Mob: +49-177-2734245
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H simmens
Author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future
@herbsimmens
HerbSimmens.com
On Jul 29, 2025, at 10:03 AM, Robin Collins <robin.w...@gmail.com> wrote:
Gene Fry
|
Two-thirds of global warming this century is the result of cleaning up air pollution. Do not adjust your sets, your screen is not malfunctioning. If Professor Peter Cox, of the University of Exeter, and his colleague Margaux Marchant are right, greenhouse gases are no longer the main driver of global warming. The mechanism is well understood. Some portion of the energy that reaches the Earth from the sun bounces back out to space, the rest is absorbed. The balance between them is not fixed. Sulfur pollution in the atmosphere tends to make clouds brighter, meaning they bounce more solar energy back out to space. The truth that dare not speak its name is that sulfur pollution counteracts global warming, so when you clean it up, the globe warms up faster. Let me be clear, SO₂ in the air sucks: it causes acid rain, it’s bad for your lungs, it messes with terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in all kinds of ways. We have very good reasons to clean it up. But when we do clean it up, we diminish albedo. Less SO₂ means duller clouds, which means less solar energy bounces back out into space, which means more energy gets trapped in the atmosphere. That this could happen isn’t at all news to climate researchers, but Cox and Marchant’s research shows this effect is possibly quite a lot bigger than we’d grasped. |
To be clear, this isn’t some fringe theory from some internet rando: Professor Cox is one of the most senior climate researchers in the world. He’s a lead author on the 4th, 5th and 6thAssessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a member of the UK Government’s Defra Scientific Advisory Council, as well as leading one of the world’s top centers for Climate Research. |
One Percent Brighter is SO₂-aware. Guys like Peter Cox don’t imperil reputations built painstakingly over decades on an explosive result like this unless they’re pretty darn sure. You can learn about his research in all its gory details in this podcast he did with Leon Simons. This is big news. And yet, I bet you haven’t heard about it. The mainstream media hates to cover this kind of story. There’s a strong bias towards climate stories that are morally tidy. Stories where pollution is bad and kills the earth, and stopping pollution is good and saves the earth. There’s a panicked unwillingness to acknowledge the messy reality the story of SO₂ abatement brings, where we help mother earth by cleaning up a pollutant and it thanks us by kicking us in the groin. The reality is, the atmosphere isn’t interested in your morality play. The laws of thermodynamics couldn’t care less if they line up with your NGO’s Vision statement. Sulfur dioxide in the air will keep both acidifying the rain and cooling the planet whether we like it or not. If we were generally saner about climate change, we’d recognize this story for what it is: a loud, blaring siren telling us we’ve spent decades years actually doing geoengineering, without ever quite acknowledging it to ourselves. Now we’re stopping, and the result is what we always knew it would be: Termination Shock. You’re a free subscriber to One Percent Brighter. Paid subscribers get extra karma. |
© 2025 Quico Toro 6577 rue Fabre, Montreal, QC H2G 2Z4 Unsubscribe  |
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oswald....@hispeed.ch
Hi Gene,
albedo feedbacks are in fact strong.
They are caused by GHG, that’s why they are called feedbacks.
The main driver of Global Warming are GHG.
Regards
Oswald
Von: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> Im Auftrag von Gene Fry
Gesendet: Dienstag, 29. Juli 2025 18:25
An: oswald....@hispeed.ch
Cc: Robin Collins <robin.w...@gmail.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Betreff: [HPAC] Re: Greenhouse gases are the main reason the planet is warming
Oswald,
Greenhouse gases were and are the trigger for warming.
but albedo effects are now the main show.
GHGs formerly dominated, but that is no longer so.
However, GHGs still account for substantial ongoing warming:
about 2°C for doubled CO2.
Over the past 25 years,
albedo feedbacks accounted for 69% of observed warming.
The bulk of that recent albedo feedback was the decline in cloud cover over the oceans.
That exceeds the albedo decline (about 0.1°C effect over 2000-25) from fewer sulfate aerosols.
The sulfate decline was mostly over land.
Gene Fry
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/3E30E1E9-815E-4713-8ED9-3EBF2594CB73%40rcn.com.
PR CARTER
To: "Gene Fry" <gene...@rcn.com>
Cc: "Robin Collins" <robin.w...@gmail.com>, "healthy-planet-action-coalition" <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2025 9:51:00 AM
Subject: AW: [HPAC] Re: Greenhouse gases are the main reason the planet is warming
IPCC expert reviewer
Co-author2018 Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival
Robin Collins
Tom Goreau
- Article
- Open access
- Published: 19 July 2025
How to think about the clear-sky shortwave water vapor feedback
npj Climate and Atmospheric Science volume 8, Article number: 274 (2025)
Abstract
Earth’s climate feedback quantifies the response of Earth’s energy budget to temperature changes and thus determines climate sensitivity. The climate feedback is largely controlled by water vapor which absorbs both longwave radiation emitted by Earth and shortwave radiation from the Sun. For the clear-sky shortwave water vapor feedback λSW, a gap remains between process understanding and estimates from comprehensive climate models. Therefore, we present a hierarchy of simple models for λSW. We show that λSW is proportional to the change with temperature in the square of atmospheric transmissivity that depends on the atmospheric concentration of water vapor and its ability to absorb shortwave radiation. The global mean λSW is well captured by a simple analytical model that approximates the strong spectral variations in water vapor absorption, whereas its temperature dependence results from spectral details in water vapor absorption. With this study, we expand the conceptual understanding of an important but understudied feedback component.
Tom Goreau
Enhanced shortwave absorption by water vapor increases effective climate sensitivity via accelerated AMOC recovery
- Article
- Open access
- Published: 26 July 2025
Enhanced shortwave absorption by water vapor increases effective climate sensitivity via accelerated AMOC recovery
npj Climate and Atmospheric Science volume 8, Article number: 283 (2025) Cite this article
Abstract
Climate models exhibit substantial inter-model spread in climate sensitivity, typically attributed to uncertainty in cloud feedbacks. In contrast, the influence of clear-sky shortwave absorption (SWA) remains underexplored, despite its substantial uncertainty. Using a single-model framework, we systematically perturb SWA and impose CO₂ quadrupling on distinct mean states that differ in SWA, allowing assessment of its impact on both the mean climate and the CO₂-driven response. Enhanced SWA reduces surface shortwave radiation, leading to Arctic cooling. Under higher SWA, CO₂ forcing drives increased advection of colder Arctic air into the subpolar North Atlantic, enhancing turbulent heat loss and facilitating AMOC recovery. This accelerated recovery amplifies warming in the subpolar North Atlantic, strengthens lapse rate and shortwave cloud feedbacks, and ultimately increases climate sensitivity over time. These findings reveal a previously overlooked pathway by which clear-sky SWA modulates long-term climate feedback, underscoring the need to better constrain SWA in climate models.
Jan Umsonst
Hi Peter, this one is a central study on this topic, they also mention the other studies:
Others have analyzed polar albedo trends and attributed multidecadal declines in net top-of-atmosphere (TOA) solar flux to reduced sea ice (Donohoe et al., 2020; Loeb et al., 2021; Riihelä et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2019). For example, Riihelä et al. (2021) found that Arctic and Antarctic surface albedo anomalies during 2016–2018, relative to 1982–1991, contributed a global-mean net TOA solar flux anomaly of 0.26 W m−2.
The planetary cooling effects of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice during 2016–2023 were about 20% and 12% less, respectively, than they were during 1980–1988. Disappearing sea ice is therefore amplifying climate change by causing Earth to absorb roughly an additional 0.3 W m−2 of solar power for each degree Celsius of global warming, a feedback that is stronger than that simulated by most climate models.
"Earth's Sea Ice Radiative Effect From 1980 to 2023"; https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024GL109608
This one is also noteworthy as it moderates the signal somewhat - global land surface mean albedo (GLMA):
From 2001 to 2020, GLMA increased by 0.6%, and the induced global radiative forcing was -0.0768±0.0253 W/m². During the recent two decades, albedo over snow-free regions significantly increased by 2.28% with radiative forcing of -0.1257±0.0025 W/m². This forcing was 2.5 times more than that induced by snow dynamics, and was equivalent in magnitude to 45.89% of that caused by CO2 emissions and 37.41% of that caused by the total greenhouse gas emissions from 2011 to 2019 estimated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report.
Source:
"Satellites reveal
recent increases in global land surface albedo that moderates
global
warming"; https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-4426295/v1
Unfortunately this study
had now numbers on the albedo effect of darkening oceans: "Darkening
of the Global Ocean"; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.70227
All the best
Jan
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-- Jan Umsonst Wallauer Str. 6D, 30326 Frankfurt am Main Tele: 0176 41114523 E-Mail: j.o.u...@gmail.com Performing Vitality: https://performingvitality.wordpress.com/
Jan Umsonst
Hi Gene,
you are spot on as more and more evidence points to a substantial cloud feedback reinforced by SOx reduction - but the former will become way more important - currently some studies try to give the fault for the acceleration of warming SOx as it is the most convenient explanation but that's nonsense if you look at spatial patterns and time of emergence...
Here what Helge Gössling say's:
But what has caused the decline in low clouds? Fewer man-made aerosols in the atmosphere, in particular due to stricter requirements for marine diesel, may have contributed to this. As condensation nuclei, aerosols play a significant role in cloud formation; in addition, they also reflect sunlight themselves. Furthermore, natural fluctuations and ocean interactions could play a role.
Helge Gößling, however, considers it unlikely that these factors alone can explain the phenomenon and brings a third mechanism into play: it is global warming itself that is causing the low clouds to disappear. “If the albedo decline is due to an intensifying feedback between global warming and clouds, as some climate models suggest, we have to expect quite a strong warming in the future,” he emphasizes.
"The planet's lower reflectivity is causing a sharp increase
in global warming";
https://www.helmholtz.de/en/newsroom/article/the-planets-lower-reflectivity-is-causing-a-sharp-increase-in-global-warming/
Here on the effect of the 2023 albedo drop - some ~0.2°C
warming:
In 2023, the global mean temperature soared to almost 1.5 kelvin above the preindustrial level, surpassing the previous record by about 0.17 kelvin. Previous best-guess estimates of known drivers, including anthropogenic warming and the El Niño onset, fall short by about 0.2 kelvin in explaining the temperature rise. Using satellite and reanalysis data, we identified a record-low planetary albedo as the primary factor bridging this gap. The decline is apparently caused largely by a reduced low-cloud cover in the northern mid-latitudes and tropics, in continuation of a multiannual trend.
"Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low
planetary albedo"; https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq7280
This graph say's it all if you go through it region for
region:
1: Southern Hemisphere: sea ice losses, causes also a warmer SO and a cloud feedback - also Southeastern Pacific and Atlantic
2: Indian Ocean - positive Indian Ocean dipole that couples stronger with El Ninos in a warmer climate and is projected to intensify - 2019 extreme and in 2023 again.
3: North Atlantic off northwest Africa - massive marine heatwave
with low winds, high pressure, low clouds, stratification, shallow
mixed layer depth - mostly internal feedbacks of an massive MHW
causing low cloud cover
4: Amazon - massive drought caused supported by deforestation but
mainly by SST patterns in the Pacific (La Nina) and in the
Atlantic - North Atlantic warming known to trigger droughts in the
Amazon
5: North America Canada - massive drought and wildfires with the smoke spreading across the Arctic - Black carbon can reduce cloud cover, or increase it depending on where the BC accumulates - below or over a cloud - so possible that the cloud feedback over the high latitudes had been also caused by BC emissions
6: Western North Pacific - massive marine heatwave we have in
this area developing the last years which is caused by poleward
head advection (Kuroshio current), collapsed mode water formation
during winter (also in 2023? - wait here for a study), subsurface
heat accumulating near the surface, a recent study also found a
shallow mixed layer (heats faster up) and weak winds under high
pressure (anyway low clouds) all favoring a cloud feedback over
warmer water - these heatwaves develop during summer under high
pressure so anyway not a large contribution by SOx reductions
(especially if the reductions happened in 2020).
7: Equatorial Pacific north and south of the equator - its the sea surface pattern effect of the tropics. When SSTs increase in the deep convection areas of the Indo Pacific warm pool the stability of the tropical troposphere increases preventing convection in the subtropics thereby increasing the amount of low clouds which causes the shortwave absorption to decline. But in 2023 we had a El Nino developing which warmed the central to eastern tropical Pacific where you have cold SSTs. The resulting convection over these areas reduced the stability of the tropical troposphere which then favored convection in the subtropics thereby reducing the amount of low clouds. So this cloud feedback had been the El Nino.
So all these strong shortwave signals in the single regions had been largely been a result of feedbacks or "natural variability".
This graph shows nicely the effect of the SST pattern effect which also operates across the extratropical regions - these exceptional large ups and downs in the EEI are caused by the pattern effect mostly ENSO cycles causing clouds to increase or decrease:
I go with Hansen - 2/3 cloud feedback and 1/3 SOx:
"Large Cloud Feedback Confirms High Climate Sensitivity"; https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2025/CloudFeedback.13May2025.pdf
This one is also highly important to understand the cloud feedback - declining soil moisture because of massive continental water storage losses - triggers a direct continental cloud feedback and a secondary cloud feedback via collapsing ecosystems and reduced biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOC's) - continental drying reaches now massive scales:
"Unprecedented continental drying, shrinking freshwater
availability, and increasing land contributions to sea level
rise"; https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx0298
The more you go into detail the worse it gets with the cloud feedback, that is only starting if one looks at the drivers like upper ocean stratification and mixed layer depth...
The stratification signal in 2023 went off charts:
"New Record Ocean Temperatures and Related Climate Indicators
in 2023"; https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-024-3378-5
Wait here for a follow up study that this signal is further
tracked and studied - MHW expansion drive a shift of upper ocean
heat uptake to shallower depths speeding up upper ocean
stratification...
All the best
Jan
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Jan Umsonst
Hi Tom,
tropospheric water vapor went sharply upwards in 2023/24 (we had even before a model error by some 100% if I remember right here), and till today not a large decline happened - could be a regime shift, as after El Ninos it should decline sharply again but it didn't well into 2025...
https://climate.copernicus.eu/global-climate-highlights-2024
This table shows the latest values:
Graph (f) shows how it reacted in the past:
"Global total precipitable water variations and trends over the period 1958–2021"; https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/28/2123/2024/
One reason could be the intensification of ocean fronts - ocean
surface heterogeneity index increased to record levels in 2023 -
as they intensify latent heat loss to the atmosphere from the
oceans. Or other reasons why water vapor goes not significantly
decline again...
If water vapor levels remain at such extreme levels, it could be
another regime shift - also after 2016 we did not have a strong La
Nina, but it declined significantly again, but in the second half
of 2024 till today it did not...
All the best
Jan
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Tom Goreau
Thanks, Jan!
Yes indeed, once again events outpace the most extreme model projections!
It’s a fundamental feature of the models, not just random error……
The various model temperature projections are reasonably consistent, but NOT rainfall projections, which are all over the place, and are not to be trusted because essential physics of the feedbacks is missing from the models……….
Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
Chief Scientist, Biorock Technology Inc., Blue Regeneration SL
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No one can change the past, everybody can change the future
It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think
Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away
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